One thing was very observable in the little group:  the child Nellie was intensely fond of the man, and he himself seemed to entertain and constantly endeavor to express an exalted admiration for Mr. Denham.  While the latter was speaking Lester’s animated looks followed every word and gesture:  he anticipated his unexpressed wishes, and watched to save him the trouble of moving or asking for anything.

“No, no, Nellie, stay and finish your dinner:  Lester is not quite ready for you yet.”  Her mother said this in reference to the child’s eagerness to follow the trusty attendant from the room, and her neglect of her meal in consequence.  “Nellie is in the habit of carrying up the sugar and cream for the coffee, and she thinks Lester cannot possibly get on if she does not assist,” said Ruth in smiling explanation as Nellie hastened after him.

The next instant there was the mingled sound of a heavy fall or succession of falls outside, and one quick, stifled scream from the child.

“The dumb-waiter, quick!  It has broken from its weights and scalded Nell with the hot coffee,” cried Ruth, making a spring toward the door by which Lester had gone out.

Her husband, forgetting his lameness, was instantly at her side, but some force held the door against them both, and abandoning it after the first effort, the father turned hurriedly to the one leading into the hall.  I sat nearest that, and in the excitement I had moved quickly aside, so that when it was flung violently open the moment before my host the governor of the prison reached it, I was thrust back against the wall, from which place, half dead with fright, I saw the hall crowded with convicts, the foremost of whom held a pistol directly toward Mr. Denham’s head.

It snapped with a sharp report, and when the smoke cleared I found Mr. Denham had dodged the fire and was closed in a scuffle with the villain for the weapon.  A dozen more seemed to spring on him from the threshold; I heard his wife’s cry of agony; and then the door at the other side burst in, and Lester, with his gray eyes gleaming like a flame, bounded over the body of a bloody convict that fell from his grasp as he broke into the room.  Quick as thought he caught up one of the heavy chairs in his hands, and bringing it down with desperate force on the heads of the governor’s assailants, felled one, while the other staggered back and dropped his pistol.  Mr. Denham caught it like a flash, and fired it in the face of a wretch who was aiming at Lester’s heart.  The convicts fell back, and over their bodies the governor and his aid sprang into the crowded hall.

“The child! the child!  O God! my little daughter!” It was Ruth’s voice in tones of such anguish and terror as I never before heard uttered by human voice.

She was looking from the window into the yard below, and there she beheld Nellie lifted up as a shield against the guns of the guards by a party of the escaping convicts.  The little creature was deadly white and perfectly silent:  her great blue eyes were wide and frozen with fright, and her little hands were clasped in entreating agony and stretched toward her mother.